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Give me a couple of weeks and we may be able to work something out. A few months back i picked up a Migaki from Dave. I love it, but wouln't mind giving a shig a run. I need to send it in to Jon to have a minor nic on the tip taken care of.

We are off and running with this exchange. As I've stated before, I'm pretty novice with nives of this calibur, I know enough to know how much better it is than the standard, store-bought kitchen fare. So I'll try to give a legit review. I'm guessing Panda will do the same.

got it today, kochi has really really nice fit & finish, balance is perfect and the handle is pretty sweet, first time trying a burnt chestnut one. love the highly asymmetric grind with lots of convexity on right face and lightly convex on bottom half of left face. i didn't think i would enjoy that type of grind, it works well on this one. surprised by how light it is. has a bit of a belly though which i don't care for. ive only used it lightly and already have a feeling i'm going to end up wanting one for myself.

opened it up a little bit and i swear the profile is flatter now, weird but turned out to be a positive. sharpening it was a bit more difficult than i was expecting, the heat treat made it tough i suppose or the cladding is just stubborn?

took on a very cool electric blue patina from processing raw chicken breasts.

the geometry of this blade aides in very straight cutting, this is the least amount of 'steering' i've encountered in a knife.

while the handle felt good while dry, once it got water on it it feels a bit odd, not slippery but a funny texture for sure, didnt care for it.

lost off the stone edge rapidly, but is keeping a usable edge steadily.

i'm still shocked on how it's so light as the stock is on the thicker side, the grind must have removed most of the metal.

On my end, just played around with the shig at home a little. Fit and finish, as well as knife balance were amazing. Panda did some really nice things with the patina and acid etching. The edge wasn't 100% when I got it, and i'm not comfortable sharpening knives of this value when the don't belong to me, so it just got some light work and that was it.

Also, I guess I'm not sure what a "kasumi" is., but the knife was short compared to what I expected, which was a taller gyuto. It was also a little thicker on the spine than I had pictued. Maybe that'd due to the fact that is is a kasumi? I was skeptical on the large D shaped handles that I'd seen in shig photos, but I warmed up to it. quite well.

Overall a great blade, would love to see it in action an a cutter when it's at potential. Also, Panda, was that a custom saya or did it come with the knife? Either way it's an awesome fit for the blade. I've only had only other knife that came with it's own saya, and the fit of this one was leaps and bounds better.

It's off to Labor of Love for the tome being, and I'll be interested to hear his takes on a knife and how they compared to mine, since I recently handled it. I know he's an experienced sharpener and will want to touch up the edege a bit.

Thanks to Panda for taking part, I love the trust, as well as knowledge and knife bank we have in this community.

I did some initial work on it, but it was only half complete, and also maybe the etching degraded the edge, sorry I should have sharpened it prior to sending it over so you could see what it was capable of.
I think a lot of metal had previously been removed without thinning hence not really tall, its probably around 50mm.

I am not sure of the saya, came with it when i bought it second hand. I'm not a fan of sayas actually and use felt lined knife guards when in my kit.

In light of this opportunity to swap knives for a bit, I ended up purchasing a migaki. . Love this forum.